Derrick Brown

Derrick Brown will always have a special place in my journey with poetry.

I found his writing at a pivotal time in my mid-twenties. He performed at Cafe Deux Soleil in 2009 - to this day, he is still the funniest poet I've ever seen. He used music from Sigur Rós and Explosions in the Sky to back-up his readings, a technique I adopted heavily for my own performances later on. He swung for the fences with every poem - the metaphors were dizzying, the puns so bad they were good and the writing show more was nakedly honest. Brown also didn't sound like any other slam-poets I'd seen. Every other person who got on stage that night delivered their work with the same cadence and rhythm (if you've been to a slam event in the past, you know what I'm talking about).

My brother picked this book up for me recently and I read it in a few sittings. Two-stars feels cold, but I genuinely thought it was just "okay."

Derrick Brown's written voice comes off tired in this book...the metaphors don't hold the same grandeur as his earlier work. I'm also at a different place in life - a little older, a little wiser(?) and I've experienced a mix of good and bad things over the last eight years that have coloured how I see the world. Brown's words feel like they've been picked over in his notebooks - trying to recapture the magic of his early work. Many of the poems feel forced to me, rather than found.

A worthwhile read if you're a fan, but I wouldn't start with this book if you haven't read or seen him before. show less

I enjoyed this read, for while it is poetry, and often these poems were short, I like the premise behind these poems. It is realy easy to think of all the terrible things we have done as a nation. But this book points out, despite our flaws (our treachery, lies, deceit), there are some really cool things about this country. The people, the places, the foods, the culture.

This book is a geographical biography of many different poets writing from all over. And it left me with the sense that, show more while wee are all a little different, there is much that we have in common. show less

I enjoyed this read, for while it is poetry, and often these poems were short, I like the premise behind these poems. It is realy easy to think of all the terrible things we have done as a nation. But this book points out, despite our flaws (our treachery, lies, deceit), there are some really cool things about this country. The people, the places, the foods, the culture.

This book is a geographical biography of many different poets writing from all over. And it left me with the sense that, show more while wee are all a little different, there is much that we have in common. show less

If you're a fan of current poetry, I'd recommend picking this up. Brown's poems meet with various levels of success, but his best display lyricism and a sense of imagery which is quite evocative.